Contagion Trailer: Steven Soderbergh Is Ready To Infect You With Fear

The first trailer for Steven Soderbergh's new thriller Contagion has gone online, and you can watch it embedded below or at Apple.com for glorious, glorious HD. It's an outbreak thriller starring none less than Matt Damon, Marion Cotillard, Laurence Fishburne, Kate Winslet, Jude Law and Gwyneth Paltrow, so yeah, you're probably going to want to take a look.

I guess I figured with Soderbergh directing and the seemingly straightforward premise that there would be some kind of twist, for the infection and outbreak to lead to some more massive conspiracy, for the whole thing to take place in one location, something to set it apart from other outbreak films we've seen (like, uh, Outbreak). But it seems like Soderbergh has stepped into the thriller ballpark and is playing it straight down the line, and in the way only he can, has made it intriguing all the same. Obviously the digital camera work looks fantastic, the quick cuts and close-ups making something even as mundane as a bunch of guys in suits in a room look interesting. Everyone in the cast but Damon and Paltrow seem to be some kind of higher-ups involved in epidemiology or the government, and while Paltrow kicks it in the trailer, Damon seems to be doing kind of a common-man Bourne thing as he fights to stay alive. And hey, is Soderbergh secretly a big fan of The Talented Mr. Ripley? He's reunited the entire main cast!

Surprisingly enough for a movie with this many stars and from such a major director, Contagion comes to theaters really soon, on September 9. It doesn't seem likely to be angling for Oscar attention or anything like that, but if it's as solid and gripping as this trailer is, it could be that great kind of early-fall entertainment that transitions you into the heavier stuff of October and November. Right now it's scheduled against the Nick Swardson comedy Bucky Larson: Born to be a Star, so you know you'll at least have an easy choice there.